Halfway through the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle season one could have hardly faulted Top Fuel dragster driver Morgan Lucas if he was looking forward to the end. By the time the end arrived, Lucas wasn't nearly ready.

In a few short months, Lucas and his team were having fun again.

“I really love what I do and I wouldn’t trade anything for the world but it makes it easier to love what you do when you go to the starting line and think you’re going to win,” explained Lucas, who was one of ten NHRA Top Fuel drivers to qualify for the Countdown to 1 playoffs.

“At Pomona I really felt good, especially after first round. We made that great run on Saturday night and we go in the first round and I felt like we made a really good run then too. It just gave us so much more to go into the winter based on. It’s like now seeing all the little things that are going on around here and the stuff that’s being approached in a common sense light. It makes me look for the long term in this whole deal.”

Halfway through the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle season one could have hardly faulted Top Fuel dragster driver Morgan Lucas if he was looking forward to the end. By the time the end arrived, Lucas wasn't nearly ready.

In a few short months, Lucas and his team were having fun again.

“I really love what I do and I wouldn’t trade anything for the world but it makes it easier to love what you do when you go to the starting line and think you’re going to win,” explained Lucas, who was one of ten NHRA Top Fuel drivers to qualify for the Countdown to 1 playoffs.

“At Pomona I really felt good, especially after first round. We made that great run on Saturday night and we go in the first round and I felt like we made a really good run then too. It just gave us so much more to go into the winter based on. It’s like now seeing all the little things that are going on around here and the stuff that’s being approached in a common sense light. It makes me look for the long term in this whole deal.”

With the start of the 2011 NHRA Full Throttle Series just around the corner, Lucas is raring to get back behind the wheel of his dragster.  But, Lucas knows the more time he spends testing and driving with crew chiefs Dickie Venables and Kurt Elliot calling the shots, will only make the Geico Powersports team stronger for the long haul.

“I want to go to Pomona and I want to have a good showing at Pomona and it would be nice to win but if we have to take baby steps and creep our way up to the top, then that’s what we have to do,” said Lucas, in his more patient approach. “I have a feeling that we have the actual organization here to do that now.”

Lucas means no disrespect towards previous tuner Jimmy Walsh but with the addition of the Venables/Elliot tuning duo, he was clearly making a move towards the future of his organization.
Walsh joined the team in August of 2008 and together he and Lucas won three national events and qualified on the pole once in 2009.

“We had a good thing with Jimmy when he was here because he really helped a lot and made some real improvements across the board with a lot of things,” Lucas explained. “But it’s not every day you get the opportunity to work with someone who is a former championship crew chief that has won championships and set elapsed time records in a funny car, which to me is harder to do than with a dragster.”

Lucas said scoring just two semi-final finishes in 2010 left him longing for the success of 2009 - three career national event titles. According to Lucas, it was clear a change needed to be made.

“I felt like we had a team that was on the verge [of contending for a title] at the beginning of the year and we slowly started losing,” explained Lucas. “And there’s nothing worse like a helpless feeling in watching something that looked like it was so good turn into something that was so far from being anywhere near competitive. It’s rough, it’s a tough pill to swallow and I think anybody else in my position would say the same thing. You almost feel helpless but at the same time I’m the guy that has to make the decision on helping it. I’m the guy that has to do things to help fix the problem.”

Since becoming one of the youngest team owners in the nitro ranks at 21 years old, he's had to learn how to make the tough decisions.

“To be honest there were times it was so overwhelming that I just procrastinated and let everybody else do all the work,” admitted Lucas, of his early years as a team owner. “I didn’t handle things the way I should have. In the past few years I’ve gotten more involved. I just thought that nothing would go wrong. I realized that in order to be a good manager you have to be extremely hands on. You have to be involved in people’s lives. I feel like you have to earn respect out here. I’m really working my butt off to earn that.”

Another profound lesson he’s learned is that aggressive tuning is key when racing amongst the kings of the sport.

With the addition of Venables and Elliot, Lucas becomes the latest driver to race in Top Fuel with a tuning effort deeply rooted in the Funny Car ranks. Antron Brown and Cory McClenathan are two of the most notable dragster drivers to employ the aggressive tuning style of past Funny Car tuners.

Together Venables and Elliot tuned Tony Pedregon to Funny Car championships. They joined Lucas in time for Lucas to get a feel of the aggressive tuning nature associated with those coming from the Funny Car division.

“I think it’s a fresh attitude and a non-complacent attitude from someone who is very competitive and very serious about what he does,” :ucas said of Venables style, reflecting on their two races together. “Once he gets used to the dragster and throwing everything at it I think he’ll be that much better at the dragster than he was at the funny car. What he told me was that the dragster is a little more forgiving.

“When you hear something like that it gives you a lot of confidence. It’s one thing to win three races like we did here a couple years ago, which was a great year, but we still finished 7th in points that year and it wasn’t where we needed to be because we didn’t have the consistency overall.”

To gain consistency as both a driver, team owner and decision maker, Lucas has immersed himself into getting to know his lead tuner as well as ensuring he’s at his best physically within the cockpit. He’s improving on his mental conditioning as well, admitting he wasn’t as tuned as he should have been when it came to flipping the switch between roles.

Last season’s time with Venables was one of acclimation. This year is definitely a growing period.

“I think [Venables] will put us in position to win more races and to get us on TV more because I don’t care about getting on TV myself but I do care about our sponsors getting on TV,” Lucas said. “It’s not about the glory to me, it’s about going to the races to win and have fun. And just living my dream, I feel like I’m beating the dead horse on this one but I do feel like we have a good program going.

“The most profound less I’ve learned in all of this is to appreciate the good things while they last. You have to appreciate everything because it doesn’t mean it’s going to last forever. I’ve got a lot of things to be thankful for. The biggest thing is to try and respect others.”

And in 2011, Lucas is looking to earn the same respect he’s planning to give others.

 

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